


Explosive Bribery

by RedBubbles



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Explosives, Gen, Platonic Relationships, Roadhog is just mentioned, platonic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-06
Updated: 2017-03-06
Packaged: 2018-09-29 22:23:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10145867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedBubbles/pseuds/RedBubbles
Summary: A degraded batch of nitroglycerin seems like a fantastic opportunity to make some mega-explosives, but your safety conscious mind and promise to Roadhog to keep the demolitionist safe outweighs the desire to watch him blow shit sky-high, so a bribe might be in order to stop him from going ahead and using itJust some nice platonic Junkrat stuff that I wrote because a) I felt like it and b) I don’t like it when people label him as nothing more than an insane bomber, because he makes them himself. He’s a smart lil cookie, and he needs recognition for that





	

A degraded batch of nitroglycerin seems like a fantastic opportunity to make some mega-explosives, but your safety conscious mind and promise to Roadhog to keep the demolitionist safe outweighs the desire to watch him blow shit sky-high, so a bribe might be in order to stop him from going ahead and using it

Just some nice platonic Junkrat stuff that I wrote because a) I felt like it and b) I don’t like it when people label him as nothing more than an insane bomber, because he makes them himself. He’s a smart lil cookie, and he needs recognition for that

 

“Jesus Christ,”  
“Oh, fucking-“

Junkrat descends into a long line of expletives, jerking away from the box in front of both of you and kicking an empty can hard, sending it rattling across the room. You reach out to touch one of the jars in the box, then snatch your hand back, thinking better of it.

“What are we gonna do?” you call over your shoulder, barely flinching as something heavy crashes behind you. After all the time you had spent in the presence of the inane Junker, you were used to the crashes and explosions that came with being in the lab with him.

You don’t receive an answer, so you just stare down at the contents. 12 neatly lined up jars, filled with thin, amber liquid. The acrid stench rising off it would have seemed normal to anyone less experienced, but both yours and Junkrat’s noses had been tuned to smell when something about an explosive was off.

And there was something very off about this batch of nitroglycerin. 

The heavy _clunk_ of Junkrat’s prosthetic leg as he moves closer, and he leans over the box again, jaw clenched, his expression livid.

“Fuckin’ idiots,” he growls, gesturing at the box and then storming away again, “’s what I get from orderin’ from a bunch a’ _fuckin’ idiots_ ,”

“Hey, calm down,” you say, turning away from the crate, “we just have to desensitise it. You've done that before, right?”

Junkrat makes a strangled, annoyed noise, throwing his arms in the air.  
“No! Desensitising it would just make it useless! I paid a lotta fuckin’ money for this, and I’ll go ta hell before I blow it up!”

“You’ll be well on your way to hell if you try and get this into any bombs,” you tell him. The look he gives you is pure poison, but you fold your arms obstinately.

“Whadda you know ‘bout making fuckin’ bombs? You’re a fancy scientist. You just poke bits a’ slime in tubes,”

You sigh heavily.  
“Your prosthetic arm literally creates sparks when you click. We have a whole box of degraded nitroglycerin, and you want to _transfer it into a bomb_?”

He shrugs, his anger quickly ebbing.  
“I’d’a done it already if ya weren’t so up my arse ‘bout it,”

“You would also have splattered half your innards across the wall by now too,” you say, turning back to the box and replacing the lid to one of the jars carefully, “which is exactly why we’re going to do this _carefully_ ,”

He snorts and walks over again, plucking a jar from the crate.  
“Hey, watch that!” you say warningly, keeping your eyes on his thin fingers, feeling very much like a mother watching her child try to light a match, or touch a snake, and being unable to anything about it.  
“Aw, go shove a test tube up ya arse,” he snaps, jerking it away from you. Perhaps his anger hadn’t completely abated. You watch him study it carefully, turning it this way and that in his hands, eyes narrowed slightly. His teeth snag at his chapped lips.

“It’s almost completely degraded, Junkrat,” you say, touching the cool glass of the jar gently, “we can’t use it,”

He tears his eyes away from it, giving you a scathing look.  
“Yeh, I know it’s _degraded_ ,” he says, “doesn’t mean I can’t use it,”

“Actually, under most safety laws, it does,” you say, trying to keep your voice level as you prise the jar from his hands, “so I’m sorry, but the nitro is going on the shelf until we can safely dispose of it,”

He makes a noise like that of an animal in pain as you replace the jar in the crate and slide the lid over it, making extra carefully sure to lock it and pocket the key.  
“All’a you scientists are the same,” he growls, slumping down on the chair in front of his cluttered desk like a sulking child and fiddling with a loose wire. The desk is littered with sprinkles of gunpowder, lighters, half-dismantled bombs and loose wires. An explosive accident waiting to happen.

You sigh heavily.

“I want to blow shit up with you, alright? I just happen to want to keep the both of us safe more,” you tell him, walking over and pulling up a chair too. He rests his chin on his fist, not looking at you. Dealing with him in a bad mood really was like dealing with a 5 year old.

“Tell you what,” you say, “let’s mix up some gunpowder. Special recipe, yeah?”

He fixes you with a suspicious stare out of the corner of his eye.  
“What’s the catch?”  
“Catch is that you don’t go anywhere near the nitro without my permission. Ok?”  
He makes another pained noise.  
“Ok?” you say again, firmer this time. He shuts his eyes and groans.  
“Fine, whatever, ok,"

You clap him on the shoulder, and then reach into your pocket, taking ahold of a heavy set of keys. You jangle them in front of him.  
“I’ll even let you get the potassium nitrate from the store room,” you sing softly, waving the keys in front of his face hypnotically. His scowl melts away almost instantly and he snatches the keys, as though worried you’re going to take them back. He slides off the chair and practically skips to the store cupboard. The keys rattle loudly, and you turn back to the desk, carefully sweeping aside the clutter directly in front of you and lifting your mass balance over. With a few hazardous crashes and a loud thud, Junkrat saunters out of the storeroom, a box under one arm, and kicks the door shut carelessly. The resulting rattle makes you flinch.

“You know there are hundreds of thousands of incredibly shock sensitive explosives in there, right?”  
He waves his hand at you dismissively, dropping the box on the desk with a thud.  
“’S’not important. S’long as it’s under 5 degrees in there, it’s fine,”

You sigh heavily and tare the mass balance before leaning over and inspecting various jars and pots until you find the one containing sulfur. Junkrat slumps down beside you, sorting out the potassium nitrate and spooning it into a pot. 

Making gunpowder with Junkrat never failed to put you on edge. While he claimed that he could measure with his eyes (and you didn’t doubt that; he’d been making explosives for years), but his method of doing it sprayed specks of charcoal across your coat and spilled sulfur across the desk, and even though it was quickly lost amongst the mess, the thought of the built-up layer of grime makes you cringe a little every time.

You understand why Symmetra doesn’t come close to his lab.

It’s only when a grabs a stick of charcoal and starts to crush it up with his hand that you grab his wrist.  
“ _Please_ use a mortar and pestle,” you plead, “other people have to use the gunpowder too, ok?”

He looks you square in the eye as he crumbles the rest of the charcoal into a fine powder in his clenched fist.

You sigh and shake your head.  
“Ok, ok. Do you want to use the potassium nitrate I measured out?”

He shrugs.  
“Sure, give it over,”

You tip it carefully from the mass balance to the pot, and he gently mixes it around, thankfully with a small spatula and not his finger like he had done the first few times. He studies it carefully, and then dips his finger into it, raising it to his mouth. 

Just before it can touch his tongue, you grab his wrist and yank it away.  
“Christ, don’t lick the fucking gunpowder!”  
“Why not?” he yells indignantly, “I always lick it! I can tell if it’s off that way,”  
“There are _so_ many other ways of testing gunpowder than by licking it,”  
“Maybe for you. You don’t make bombs for a living,”

You groan and shove his hand away, quickly screwing the lid onto the pot of gunpowder and pocketing it.  
“You’ll be the death of me, I swear,”  
“Whatever,” he replies, smearing the powder down the pristine sleeve of your white lab coat. Tutting at him, you reach over and pick up the pot of sulfur shoved to the back of the desk.

As you reach over to scoop up the pot of sulfur, Junkrat sucks the remains of the powder from his finger, then sits silently for a few seconds, contemplating.  
“How much potassium nitrate didya put in that?”

You shrug.  
“Not sure,” you lie, "If it’s 100 grams of gunpowder, about 75 grams,”  
Of course you knew exactly how much you put in, but Junkrat always teased you for being so specific.  
“Needs more,”  
“It does _not_ need more oxidants,”

He sticks his tongue out at you.  
“Who’s the resident bomb expert here? Put more nitrate in,” he says, reaching for the jar of white powder. You grab his wrist.  
“Who’s in charge of safety and handling here?” you say. He jerks his arm from your grip irritably.  
“Fine, you do it,”

You sigh as you pull the jar over and carefully begin measuring out tiny amounts. You seem to be doing nothing but rubbing him up the wrong day today, which obviously isn’t what you want to do, but if it keeps him safe, it means you’ll end the day tucked up in your bed and not impaled on Roadhog’s hook.

Silence settles in the lab again. Apparently placated, Junkrat begins working on a mine. He carefully prises the top off and begins poking around inside it, nimbly twisting and pinching wires into place and brushing away errant specks of oil and gunpowder. Smiling slightly to yourself, you look back at the potassium nitrate, carefully spooning it onto the mass balance with steady hands.

“Oh, dammit!” Junkrat yells suddenly, shoving the mine away and making you almost drop the spoonful of potassium nitrate in your hand.

You spin around on the chair to face him as he quickly packs the untied wires into the mine, making you cringe. Any one of them could catch fire and detonate in a few seconds. Ignoring it, you focus on him instead as he grinds his teeth.  
“What is it? What’s wrong?”

He ignores you and slaps his forehead, getting up and striding over to the crate of nitroglycerin. Immediately, you’re at his side, ready to wrestle his grabby hands away from it if need be.

“I worked it out!”

“Worked what out?” you squeak as he begins prising the lid up off the crate. The wood creaks, and the padlocks squeaks in protest.

“Worked how we’re gonna use it!”

You rush over, yanking fireproof gloves on over your latex ones. Junkrat’s hands had developed hard callouses that made them almost impervious to heat, but you weren’t quite as lucky.  
“How do you propose we use it then?"

“We soak the gunpowder in the nitro!”

You stare at him, open mouthed.  
“Please, tell me you’re joking,”  
He raises his eyebrows.  
“Should I be?”

You stare at his expression of deadly seriousness and mild bewilderment. Does he _really_ not understand how much of a terrible idea that is?

“That would be catastrophic,” you say, moving between Junkrat and the crate. Although you had the key, you wouldn’t put it beyond Junkrat’s motivation or strength to pull the lid off barehanded if he really wanted to use it.

“We’re making _bombs_ ,” he says as though speaking to a child, “if you wanna worry ‘bout keep your arse safe an’ protected, then you shoulda stayed workin’ with animals in cages!”

“I’m not only worried about my safety, but yours too,” you tell him, desperately trying to haul his attention away from the dangerously degraded explosives behind you. 

An idea strikes. You click your fingers, snapping Junkrat’s wandering attention from the crate and back to you.

“Tell you what; I will order a new batch, premium, un-degraded, and you can use _as much_ in your rip tire as you want,”

You can see the cogs turning behind his eyes as he puzzles out the bribe. You’d always carefully measured the amount of explosives he used it in, hanging over his shoulder and whipping the nitroglycerin away the second you judged him to be using too much. 

The thought of being given free reign, even with something as small as using more nitroglycerin in his rip tire, is too big of an opportunity to pass up.

“This is a bribe, in’nit?”

You nod.  
“Is it working?”

He glances at the crate, but you can tell he’s lost almost all interest in it. The promise of a brand new batch all to himself is all too sweet.

“Yeh. Yeh, it’s workin’. You better get ordering,"


End file.
